


A Nascent Child Knows No Suffering

by JayTRobot



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dreamscapes, Father/Son Incest, Guilt, Incest, M/M, Malcolm is a Psychosexual Mess, Masturbation, Shame, Surreal, nipple sucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 21:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20982710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayTRobot/pseuds/JayTRobot
Summary: Malcolm gets the first good night's sleep he's had in who knows how long while dreaming about his father and how safe he used to feel in Martin's care.





	A Nascent Child Knows No Suffering

**Author's Note:**

> Written at the request of the wonderful @feralhworddaddy over on Twitter, who entrusted me with their idea. I hope my story delivers!
> 
> Tagged for incest even though nothing explicit happens.

The walls of Malcolm’s childhood room seemed too close, like the room was smaller, or he was bigger. The nightlight on the wall radiated like a tiny sun, lighting everything much better than it really should.

In contrast to the walls that crowded, his bed was larger than it had been when he was young. It had been a twin, as most children’s beds are, but the bed that dominated his room now was very clearly his current bed, from his current room, complete with restraints, but with the sheets and pillows of a jail cell.

Malcolm walked slowly into his old room, each step barely moving him forward. He heard a voice from the hallway and it was his sister’s voice, calling goodnight, and he wondered why she was there and not in her own apartment on the other side of town.

He said, “Goodnight!” back and his voice was hazy and distant and strange but definitely his own, his own current voice, his adult voice.

When he looked back to his bed, because it was apparently bed time, he found that his father was sitting with his back leaned against the headboard. He expected his father to look like he fit the rest of the scene, with darker hair and an unending parade of sweater-vests but he did not. Martin looked as he did now, prison clothes covered over with a cozy cardigan, hair and beard shot through with silver.

His father smiled and his father had always had a charming smile and Malcolm found himself smiling in return. Martin patted the bed next to him and said, “Hurry up if you want to hear a story tonight.”

Malcolm very much did want to hear a story. He missed his father’s stories. He missed the strong arm across his shoulders, his father’s warmth and voice. He missed feeling safe.

He missed his father. The father that The Surgeon had taken away from him.

He crossed the room, slowly, so slowly that he was afraid his father would lose patience and leave but Martin did not, he sat there calmly, smiling his charming smile and waiting for Malcolm to return to him.

The mattress sank under Malcolm’s weight but not as much as it should have. He kicked his legs out in front of him, mildly surprised that he was wearing the clothes he’d worn to work, slacks and leather shoes and argyle socks. His father put an arm around him, pulling him close, and reached over to select a book from the bedside shelf.

When his father lifted the book into view, Malcolm saw that it was, in fact, a case file. His father paused and smiled down at him and gently asked, “Are you comfortable?”

“I’m in my work clothes,” he replied, not really an answer to the question, as his work clothes were fairly comfortable but when his father had read him stories as a child, he’d always been in his pajamas, usually his dinosaur pajamas, so Perry Ellis slacks felt wrong.

“You don’t have to be,” his father replied, still smiling.

Malcolm realized that he was right, he _didn’t_ have to be, so he took off his leather shoes and his argyle socks and his Perry Ellis slacks and his crisp white button-down shirt (that was never so crisp or so white, really), leaving him in his white undershirt (which was also unrealistically white) and his plaid boxer shorts and while it wasn’t dinosaur pajamas, it was definitely more comfortable.

“Better?” his father asked, his arm still outstretched and welcoming and Malcolm nodded and smiled and curled up against his father’s side.

For a moment, all of the world was the soft warmth of his father’s sweater, the faint smell of cologne, his father’s steady heartbeat, and safety.

He hadn’t felt _safe_ for so long. Not since he was very little and his father used to read to him while he wore his dinosaur pajamas and he knew without any doubt that his father would keep him safe from the monsters.

Not since before he’d learned that his father _was_ one of the monsters.

But that was a good way to keep the other monsters away, wasn’t it? To have a bigger, stronger monster protecting you?

Malcolm breathed in deeply and let out a contented sigh.

His father laid a kiss on the crown of his head and began to read.

“External description. Length: 65.5 inches. Weight: 138 pounds. Body condition: intact. Rigor: full.”

He reached up and twined his fingers into his father’s beard, letting the curls wrap around his digits, something he’d done regularly as a child, to soothe himself, or simply because he liked the texture. It felt strange now, different around his adult fingers. The curls were tighter or his hands were bigger, probably the second thing, but it calmed him nonetheless and he made a small, pleased noise in his throat.

“Livor: posterior, purple, unfixed. Hair: Light brown, long and straight, 15 inches at the crown,” his father continued and Malcolm was embarrassed to find that the combination of warmth, safety, his father’s comfortable voice, and the contents of an autopsy report were acting as an aphrodisiac. He shifted, trying to get into a position where his arousal wouldn’t be obvious without alerting his father to his situation.

Everything seemed to tilt, kaleidoscoping, fragmenting. What the hell was he doing here, in his underwear, in bed with his father, a grown man curled up against his father’s side like a child, aroused by him, aroused by the closeness, the intimacy of it all? Suddenly he wanted to cry and wanted his father to kiss him and make it all better, even though the shards and colors were painting his father’s hands red like blood, his father’s smile red like blood.

Martin squeezed, pulling him closer, and sat down the case file long enough to push his chin up, so their eyes met, and just looked at him, looked at him with such intense love that the world settled down, calming, nothing but the blue of his father’s serene eyes. “Don’t leave me,” his father said and Malcolm swore to himself that he wouldn’t.

He didn’t say that out loud, however, and instead said, “I’m sorry,” meaning that he was sorry for having called the police as a child, that he was sorry for turning his back on his father in favor of his career, that he was sorry for leaving the man he loved most in the world to the loneliness of a jail cell, and that he was sorry for his arousal.

His father smiled his gentle smile and said, “You don’t have to feel ashamed for autonomic responses,” which was the best answer Malcolm could’ve asked for, as he couldn’t face the rest of it, not in this place. Those thoughts were not invited into this little sanctum, this brief respite.

So, instead, he shifted toward his father instead of away and spooned against his father’s side, an arm thrown over his chest, a leg over his legs, his arousal pressing firmly against his father’s thigh.

Martin placed another kiss in his hair and Malcolm pressed his body closer to his father’s warmth, resting his head once again on his father’s chest.

His father cleared his throat and picked up the case file and continued to read.

“Eyes: brown, cornea are clear, sclerae and conjunctivae are unremarkable, petechiae are not present. Teeth: natural, good repair.”

He let his fingers wander, again, into his father’s beard. When it, again, didn’t feel quite right, he let his touch move to his father’s collar, where chest hair was peeking above the fabric. That hair was softer and more pleasant to the touch, so he ran his fingers back and forth over the bit he could reach.

“The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished adult white female appearing compatible with the stated age of 22. The body is clad in a light gray tee shirt (size medium, brand ‘Ralph Lauren’), dark blue jeans (size 2, brand ‘Old Navy’), and black leather shoes (size 6.5, brand ‘Rock & Candy’).”

“Lisa Simmons,” he murmured, his voice soft and peaceful like it never was when he was awake.

Martin ruffled his hair, just a little. “Very good, Malcolm. You’ve always been so smart.”

There was a pause but he barely noticed, content as he was to caress his father’s chest hair and listen to his father’s heartbeat and breathe in his father’s cologne and slowly grind his cock against his father’s thigh.

“You can unbutton my shirt, if you’d like,” his father said and Malcolm found that his father’s shirt _did_ have buttons, so he did unbutton it, just halfway, and buried his whole hand into his father’s chest hair, feeling his body tense in response, but it was nothing to be ashamed of, it was simply an autonomic response to stimulus.

He heard his father’s heartbeat quicken and it occurred to him that, perhaps, he wasn’t the only one with autonomic responses.

“Cause of death: perforated cardiac wall. Diagnoses: Significant amounts of ketamine found in system, introduced via intramuscular injection point in left deltoid muscle.”

He made a small, quizzical sound. That point had always seemed strange to him.

There was pride in his father’s voice as he explained, “She didn’t like tea.”

He made a satisfied sound at the explanation.

“Pericardial sac and cardiac wall pierced…” His father’s words hitched as his fingers trailed too far and brushed over a nipple. “...with long, slender object, possibly an ice pick.”

His father’s increased heart rate and tightened nipple made the room feel warmer, or perhaps it was Malcolm that was warmer, and it bordered on too warm but he didn’t want to leave it, he didn’t want to lessen it, he wanted to burrow deeper into it so he pushed forward and nuzzled his face against his father’s chest, relishing the feeling of soft chest hair against his cheek and lips.

“Pale, anemic viscera. Left hemoth--” His father’s breath caught again, hissing between his teeth, as Malcolm brushed his lips against the hardened nub of his father’s nipple.

Small and mewling, more like a kitten than a man, he nosed against his father’s chest, breathing in cologne, pressing his body against his father’s warmth, grinding his cock slowly, lazily against his father’s thigh, and ran his tongue over his father’s nipple, once, before pulling it into his mouth.

Martin had stopped talking, stopped reading the autopsy of Lisa Simmons, and instead had tightened his arm around Malcolm’s shoulders, pulling him closer, cradling him.

He burrowed into his father’s warmth, suckling at his nipple like a lost and starving child, hungry for his father’s love, love that he had never lost but was, perhaps, hidden behind walls that he himself had put up.

The walls of the room, his childhood bedroom, began to crumble but it did not make him fearful. The past was not meant to enclose us, claustrophobically close, so instead of panicking, he simply held his father tighter and pushed himself up, nearly on top of his father, cock now pressed against Martin’s hip, and he moaned in his throat when he felt his father’s arousal against his thigh.

His father needed him just as badly, in return. His father longed for his affection and his love and his attention and that thought made his heart ache, a stabbing pain, and terrible red/orange/black lanced through the space that they occupied, floating on his bed that wasn’t his bed, floating in nothingness. His childhood gone, when things were easy, before everything hurt, before he turned away.

“Malcolm,” his father’s voice came from a very long way away, even though he was right there, his nipple still in Malcolm’s mouth, his body cradling Malcolm’s so tightly. It was a voice tinged with longing and with pain and with love, so much love.

He released his mouth, noting the pinkish-purple of the tissue around his father’s areola, it would bruise, his father would be marked by his mouth, and he made a needy sort of sound, looking up, wide-eyed, and, sounding more like a lost child than a man, even though he still had his man’s voice, said, “Dad?”

His father held his chin again and leaned down for a kiss, not like the kisses of his childhood, which had always been chaste and parental, but the kiss of a lover and the world became the blue of his father’s eyes and he woke up.

Malcolm startled awake in his bed, confused and aroused and disoriented. He attributed the disorientation to the fact that the clock said that it was eight in the morning and he’d fallen asleep around midnight, making this the first solid, uninterrupted eight hours of sleep he’d gotten in months, maybe years.

He sighed, wondering how he’d gotten to this point. As he unfastened his restraints, he went over the psychosexual symbolism in his dream. It couldn’t possibly be more blatant and the ache in his heart, where he missed Dr. Whitly, was even worse than the ache in his cock, and that was saying something.

Resigned to handle his situation before attempting to get ready for the day, already preparing excuses for the people in his life who wouldn’t believe that he’d overslept because he’d been sleeping peacefully, Malcolm pushed down his boxers and wrapped his hand around his cock.

He set to his task roughly and efficiently, trying hard to think of nothing at all, a perfunctory orgasm to get it out of his system so he could function. When he gasped, “Dad-!” at the moment of his climax, his stomach rolled with nausea.

Maybe he really did need to get back to his therapist.


End file.
